Comments on: Design, Evolution, and more Semantic Nonsense from ID Proponent, Michael Egnorhttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/design-evolution-and-more-semantic-nonsense-from-id-proponent-michael-egnor/
Your Daily Fix of Neuroscience, Skepticism, and Critical ThinkingMon, 16 Oct 2017 20:39:04 +0000hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.7By: Roy Nileshttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/design-evolution-and-more-semantic-nonsense-from-id-proponent-michael-egnor/#comment-2750
Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:56:12 +0000http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=270#comment-2750Thanks. You’re in a great position to hammer that home in your new show. (Cue music to the tune of “If I had a hammer.”)

]]>By: Steven Novellahttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/design-evolution-and-more-semantic-nonsense-from-id-proponent-michael-egnor/#comment-2748
Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:04:08 +0000http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=270#comment-2748Roy – apparently we agree, we just misunderstood each other. I may also be remembering content spread out over different blog entries. That evolution cannot “predict the future” is a common false criticism from ID/creationists, and perhaps I thought you were referring to that.

It exploits the ambiguity in the phrase “predict the future.” We cannot tell what species will evolve into in the future, but evolutionary theory can make predictions about the outcomes of future experiments and observations.

]]>By: Roy Nileshttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/design-evolution-and-more-semantic-nonsense-from-id-proponent-michael-egnor/#comment-2747
Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:20:32 +0000http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=270#comment-2747Steven: As I recall your initial remarks were countering something I suggested about how evolution has predictive powers that ID lacks, and this difference should also be pointed out. Your response at the time that “it cannot predict the future,” is different from your present phrasing that it cannot predict the future “course of evolution.”

I’m sure now that’s what you meant, but it came out as a complete dismissal of my suggestion. Predicting some future course of events is not the same as the “course of evolution.” That may look like a quibble, but I think it’s a significant difference. I don’t think the initial contention can be completely dismissed, and I doubt you think so either. (It’s not original to me in any case.)

The subject of the article at hand is that it is a MYTH that evolution is not predictive. There are observable events in the ongoing present that it can forecast that ID can’t. That to me is the counterpoint.

I read the following paragraph in the article as supporting what evolution can do, rather than emphasizing what it can’t.

“However, what matters in science is not how much you can predict on the basis of a theory or how precise those predictions are, but whether the predictions you can make turn out to be right. Meteorologists don’t reject chaos theory because it tells them it is impossible to predict the weather 100% accurately – on the contrary, they accept it because weather follows the broad patterns predicted by chaos theory.”

And as an example of the utility of that predictability:

“Many researchers developing treatments for infectious diseases now try to consider how resistance could evolve and find ways to prevent it, for instance by giving certain drugs in combination. This slows the evolution of resistance because pathogens have to acquire several mutations to survive the treatment.”

The article you reference is saying exactly what I am saying. Evolutionary theory cannot predict the future course of evolution because of chaos – just like you can’t predict the weather. But evolution does make scientific predictions about what we will find when we examine nature.

]]>By: Roy Nileshttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/design-evolution-and-more-semantic-nonsense-from-id-proponent-michael-egnor/#comment-2737
Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:17:36 +0000http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=270#comment-2737I just found the link below that may add a bit of a counterpoint to the opinion referenced here:

“Evolution is an historical science – it studies what has happened in the past and tries to understand them by processes that are still happening in the present. But it cannot predict the future because of chaos – there are too many interdependent variables.”

]]>By: TheBlackCathttp://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/design-evolution-and-more-semantic-nonsense-from-id-proponent-michael-egnor/#comment-2690
Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:35:06 +0000http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=270#comment-2690I don’t know if Josh will be back, but if he is, here is a question:

You say that gene duplication cannot increase information. What, specifically do you mean by information? You talk about semantic and semantic information, which I understand conceptually but not empirically. In order to test whether evolution can, in fact, increase semantic information, we would need some way to measure it empirically. So please provide an empirical measure of semantic information. You say that semantic information is “qualitative”, but that is utterly useless. Unless there is an empirical measure for semantic information then there is no way for us to actually test whether it is increasing or not.

I’ll make it easier: give us a specific, objective method for comparing the semantic information in two different genomes. It doesn’t have to be quantitative, it just has to be something objective and unambiguous so different people can agree, and it has to be specific enough that it can actually be used. It also has to have some relevance to evolution, obviously. An analogy is not a definition, nor is an example. Without such a definition it is nothing more than personal intuition or opinion, and neither has any validity in science.

Please try to focus on my actual points. I never said that IC is wrong because I “dislike it.” Tilting at these straw men is not advancing our conversation. I will state my point again – which you still have not addressed.

Behe’s premise is that a complex structure could not (an argument from impossibility) evolve if it could not function for its current purpose if it were any simpler. This is demonstrably wrong because the structure could have evolved from simpler forms that serve a different purpose, and because it could have evolved from genes that were freed from constraint by current necessity by gene duplication.

This alone invalidates Behe’s argument. But there is also copious evidence that co-option and gene duplication have actually taken place.

The ID defenders move the goalpost further -prove that these mechanisms increased information. But this has already been demonstrated – the information argument has never been legitimate. For example, If you make two copies of a gene from one copy – you have doubled your information. The two copies can now drift and/or be under different selective pressures and will diverge over time – now you have two different genes serving different purposes. How is this not an increase in complexity and information?

Regarding flagellum and TTSS – your characterization is not accurate (keeping in mind this is an evolving story under active research).

First let me say that it was never believed that current flagella evolved from current TTSS – clearly both evolved from a common ancestor, and it is believed that the ancestor probably looked more like a TTSS than a flagellum. Also – the point of the example is that if you reduce the flagella to a simpler structure you have something that could function as a secretory structure – so it is not irreducible from an evolutionary perspective. The actual history of flagella is a different question.

“Here we reconstruct the evolutionary history of four conserved type III secretion proteins and their phylogenetic relationships with flagellar paralogs. Our analysis indicates that the TTSS and the flagellar export mechanism share a common ancestor, but have evolved independently from one another. The suggestion that TTSS genes have evolved from genes encoding flagellar proteins is effectively refuted.”

Evolutionary relationships are complex, especially at the molecular level. The point, again, is that a plausible pathway exists. We are actively fleshing out the actual pathway – closing that gap. But ID proponents will just shift to other gaps.

Of course I admit that evolution is still an incomplete theory – all scientific theories are. Again – you are arguing against straw men, which strongly suggests that you are learning about what evolutionists say from secondary hostile sources – ID proponents. No one says that every aspect is iron-clad fact. The big picture – that evolution happened – is as well established as any fact in science. The details are still being investigated. There is no dogma on the evolution side – that is an ID fiction.

Promissory materialism? Popper used this to refer to “scientism” not science. Science is not a weak position – it has shown to be a highly successful and effective position. This is a separate and long discussion – I will just summarize by saying that materialism is a necessary premise for science – ideas have to be testable, and supernatural ideas are inherently not testable.

Regarding what ID says – I was careful to say “ID criticism of evolution.” Your response was to ID as an alternate theory – two different things. IC and ID abuse of information theory are criticisms of evolution – they are based on the argument from impossibility, and they are demonstrably wrong. ID as an alternate theory is worse than wrong – it’s not even a scientific theory, because it does not propose anything testable.

And since we’re keeping track – you still have not responded to my challenge to come up with a test of ID.